Topic: Nintendo will be aggressively targeting indy developers for wiiware and dsiware

[Stratos]

Ian, a 90% rating for a game designed for a 40MB, 10$ release is almost impossible, they usually get rating penalties just for the limitations of their medium (unless they're pretty much flash games which you wouldn't want beccause they're flash games). Look at the ratings DS games get, the averages there are way lower than on other platforms despite the DS being the undisputable king of gaming these days. Ratings go up and down based on "production values" which often mean jack **** for the player. Besides, you'd probably be much happier if you were more lenient towards lower scores at lower prices, with WiiWare games it doesn't cost much more to buy them than it'd cost to rent a game for two days.

As for comparing demos to marketing, the data doesn't support that. Maybe it's because demos suffer by default because they have to deal with an inexperienced player who still needs to be introduced to the game's basic mechanics (though teaching stuff like "press right to go right" is plain insulting) and has no training so the difficulty must be low but in the same vein the player will extrapolate from the demo to the full game and if the demo is easy he'll think the full version is easy too.

Additionally you have to make cuts somewhere to make sure the demo is no substitute for the full version but many downloadable games are fairly simple and the cuts would have to be deep to make the demo to full version step significant. XBLA has many demos that cut out before you even understand what's going on. A Kingdom For Keflings ends somewhere in the tutorial, most of the arcade remakes have a time limit of 10-20 seconds playtime (no exaggeration!) and even the ones that include actual levels often spend at least half the total playtime on the tutorial.

I can't even think of a meaningful way to cut Onslaught to give the player an impression of what the game is like without including a huge chunk of the game (especially since the game only gets difficult after the first boss which is a third of the way into the singleplayer campaign) and even then online would have to be excluded.

WiiWare World gave a 9/10 to Onslaught and My Life as a King and a 10/10 for World of Goo, so that's three right there.

Also, they could make the Onslaught demo merely online multiplayer a la StarCraft. When StarCraft came out you could only play multiplayer on two basic maps solely as the Terrans and you could go as high on the tech tree as Vultures (your first vehicle unit). After typing that I remembered that Onslaught has just one multiplayer map. So much for that idea.

[KDR_11k]

WWW rates only WiiWare games though, the review average for Onslaught is much lower. Ian is talking about averages I think, over 90 only happens with big AAA titles there.

[NWR_pap64]

Ian if you had a PS3 or 360 you will see how bad most of the demos are after playing though a bunch of them. The worst demo in recent memory was Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, if you want to know why ask Mr. Jack or whoever bought the game and played the demo.

Is that true that the Banjo Kazooie demo sucked? Wow. That's sad... though it does shed some light on why the game was an absolutely horrible failure in the marketplace.

One of the main reasons the demo sucked is because the text was criminally small. Because of this gamers, myself included, refused to buy the game until a patch was released.

[IceCold]

WWW rates only WiiWare games though, the review average for Onslaught is much lower. Ian is talking about averages I think, over 90 only happens with big AAA titles there.

World of Goo is the big exception here - it's at a 94 on Metacritic. Which is doubly impressive considering what you say is true.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Ian if you had a PS3 or 360 you will see how bad most of the demos are after playing though a bunch of them. The worst demo in recent memory was Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, if you want to know why ask Mr. Jack or whoever bought the game and played the demo.

Is that true that the Banjo Kazooie demo sucked? Wow. That's sad... though it does shed some light on why the game was an absolutely horrible failure in the marketplace.

Demo sucked because according to Nick you get a vehicle that's not very suitable on the specific level that you are on. The main reason Banjo Kazooie N&B bombed is two fold (despite the 40 dollar price tag). 1. Gamers that were interested in a Banjo Kazooie game were probably burned that this isn't a usual platformer game.(I fall in this category) 2. There is simply no interest for this type of game in the existing Xbox 360 userbase.

[Smash_Brother]

The only logical solution I could think of for Wiiware games would be to download the full game with a 30 minute trial period attached to it.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo has the ability to have downloads that expire like that.

[Stratos]

Ian if you had a PS3 or 360 you will see how bad most of the demos are after playing though a bunch of them. The worst demo in recent memory was Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, if you want to know why ask Mr. Jack or whoever bought the game and played the demo.

Is that true that the Banjo Kazooie demo sucked? Wow. That's sad... though it does shed some light on why the game was an absolutely horrible failure in the marketplace.

Demo sucked because according to Nick you get a vehicle that's not very suitable on the specific level that you are on. The main reason Banjo Kazooie N&B bombed is two fold (despite the 40 dollar price tag). 1. Gamers that were interested in a Banjo Kazooie game were probably burned that this isn't a usual platformer game.(I fall in this category) 2. There is simply no interest for this type of game in the existing Xbox 360 userbase.

I think this shows that most Rare properties do not suit the XBox fanbase.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Ian if you had a PS3 or 360 you will see how bad most of the demos are after playing though a bunch of them. The worst demo in recent memory was Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, if you want to know why ask Mr. Jack or whoever bought the game and played the demo.

Is that true that the Banjo Kazooie demo sucked? Wow. That's sad... though it does shed some light on why the game was an absolutely horrible failure in the marketplace.

Demo sucked because according to Nick you get a vehicle that's not very suitable on the specific level that you are on. The main reason Banjo Kazooie N&B bombed is two fold (despite the 40 dollar price tag). 1. Gamers that were interested in a Banjo Kazooie game were probably burned that this isn't a usual platformer game.(I fall in this category) 2. There is simply no interest for this type of game in the existing Xbox 360 userbase.

I think this shows that most Rare properties do not suit the XBox fanbase.

That's the point they are trying to get the Nintendo audience to Xbox and it failed miserably.